Ahhh, in the haze from charcoal smoke from Labor Day barbecues, the UA Fall flying open season approaches. What shall we anticipate? Lower fares? Cut service? A fast-track to 1K promotion?


I'm hoping there will be some sweet MR opportunities - perhaps even to Europe. But, of course, I may just be optimistic.


Thoughts?

Fewer flights, fewer seats, fewer planes. I don't see any bargains like in years past. Maybe more e-fares, as they open up seats very last minute. But every seat has to produce, so big specials will be few and far between.

I don't really agree with that. While the first part of your statement is true, people are equally reducing their travel. I'd be a millionaire if I had a dollar for every person that has said to me "What, you still fly? What about all those baggage fees?" Also, let's keep in mind that the capacity cutbacks haven't gone through yet, so until then we won't really notice a huge difference.

For what it's worth I've been noticing cheaper fares than ever before in the past months. Never before have I had so many mileage run opportunities during summer!^^^

So to the OP, I wouldn't expect any amazing promos but I would expect good mileage run fares as we've seen in years past.

So far, I haven't seen any particularly good fares out of SAN when looking ahead through October, so I'm not holding out much hope for great MR's this fall, compared to last fall. Then again, UA could start with some great sale fares at anytime so perhaps the key to the fall MR "season" is that those of us who do them have to try and remain flexible in terms of travel availability.

Agreed. Seeing cheaper fares LHR-->US destinations recently. A couple months ago fares were >$1,000. Now seeing discount advance bookings in the $700 range.

Starring G. Tilton as The Iceman? Evocative thread title! ^

What to expect? BOB junkboxes in place of meals in domestic C, pay for your BOB in international Y (IAD now, everywhere else likely soon), lots of "Glenn Must Go" orange wristbands, and lots of demoralized employees who feel that it's ok to take it out as bad service or lowered service to the customer.

In other words everything we love about UA but even more.

Yesterday's PHL-DEN was a good example. I was up front but early on heard one of the coach FAs make this announcement: "People, there are only two of us back here for 158 of you. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to wheel the cart through with the buy-on-board snackboxes first. Then we'll do one run with the drink cart." Said in a somewhat whiny woe-is-us don't-ask-us-for-service voice. I don't care that UA reduced staffing to FAA minimums - this type of blatant "don't expect service" announcement is offensive. Setting customer expectations could have been done in a much better manner - just some customer-oriented choice of words and tone would have gotten the point across in a better, less childish way.

Meanwhile F was Employee Class. I counted at least 4 Glenn-Must-Go wristbands on passengers who were obvious non-revs (some FAs, some pilots with spouses). "Mysteriously" there was no meal choice for this 1K. The F FAs had to be asked to hang up coats, even when coats were obviously folded with BP on top while they walked past my seatmate several times.

Oh and no Ch9.

That's what to expect this fall.

Not entirely bad day on UA - my e500 upgrade request hadn't cleared automatically, because it was a US codeshare ticket. Even after UA OLCI which works with the native UA flight# and got me on the DM list, apparently those upgrades need to be handled manually (I know they can't be requested in advance of check-in due to codeshare and OAL code in the UA PNR). When I got to the gate and asked about the upgrade, the GA gave me my BP and told me it wasn't automatic because he'd upgraded me at 4am when he saw me on the list. Even though I'd planned to use 500s, he did it as an op-up. So I didn't spend four 500's on a 1557 mile flight (ouch!).

There are good people at UA but they're burned out, their management blows, the system is stretched to the hilt, and I see little hope. Service and reliability (baggage, ontime departures, arrival gates being ready) are all going to go downhill further, and nothing UAL corporate is doing seems to make any sense as anything that could possibly fix it. That's what to expect this fall on UA IMHO.

But my next 2 month's business trips are on NW, and my Q1 2009 trips are now booked on CO as a newly-matched Platinum, so other than a Vegas trip in a couple of weeks (Rar!), an AC flight to Europe over thanksgiving with the DEN-YYZ legs on UAX, and those lovely snackbox Domestic C 777 flights for my Nov/Dec business trips, I'm pretty much done with UA unless things change.

I can't imagine a fast-track to 1K promo coming out of WHQ. Unless they are so hurting for future bookings and somebody is actually reviewing metrics on lower bookings from existing UA elites as evidence of people bailing.

Last night I discovered my Nov. flight ORD-LIH went down more than $300, so I refared for voucher. The price was higher than I wanted to pay when I bought the ticket, but the first-class upgrade with miles was down to one at the time so I went for it.

Is $350 BOS-DEN-SMF a good MR fare?

It's the best I can find because I don't want to drive to PVD/MHT and fly Ted.

I'm debating this as I have $250 voucher and a couple CR1s soon to expire.

This does take one day of my time. I'll get 10K RDM plus double miles next July for reaching 125K EQM.

A reservations supervisor told me this week that when they started rolling out the new Fall schedule, it was likely a number of flights would be canceled. That may mean that those with already booked travel will find themselves getting notice of cancelations and rebookings, which may or may not be to their liking.

FWIW lower fares seems to be the route. I'm not so sure about what deals were had in the past....but I am in LA visiting friends and family on a $325 NS RT from IAD on labor day weekend which i ticketed about 10 days ago. About cut service? I'm not so sure yet. I haven't experienced anything out of the ordinary, and saturday morning's flight out of IAD was a typical UA flight. Sitting up front, everything seemed somewhat normal, although I did hear several times on the initial announcement that overhead bin is tight. But they used to say that all the time in the past...Looks like UA is pushing dubai pretty hard out of IAD if anyone wants to experience a unique MR.

I meant to ask, by "e-fares" do you mean the fares they announce for some few day RTs each week (Tuesdays?) for the following week's weekend or weekend afterward? While I should think that an excellent way for the airline to sell off some excess capacity, I hadn't seen an appealing fare in so long that I stopped looking at them several years ago.

At least there are still a few good deals for Florida runs out of the Bay Area . . .a few . . .

Try SAN-OGG for around $600 this fall ^

They are always junk in Summer. After Labor Day the selection usually increases, but it will be interesting to see if that is the case this year.